Rare-group patients are the most affected

Thiruvananthapuram: When Anandu Ramesh’s 22-year-old sister Anamika was down with post-delivery issues at Thiruvananthapuram Medical College, he had to arrange a rare blood group O-negative. Since he was under treatment for his asthmatic problems, he was not able to donate blood for his elder sister. He needed six units of blood and was totally clueless on how to arrange it.
“The officials of the blood bank asked me to make necessary arrangements of blood overnight. I called my relatives, friends and also put a post on my Facebook wall. I managed to get one man and three women from a blood donor group. But the blood bank authorities rejected the women donors saying that they had pierced their noses recently. I was helpless and was on the verge of tears. At last, one auto driver whom I met on hospital premises agreed to donate his blood,” said Ramesh, a resident of Kanyakumari.

According to Govind H, an active blood donor at Regional Cancer Centre and a member of ‘Friends To Support’ app, in RCC there are around 200 donations happening in a day but still, relatives of patients have to run around for finding blood donors. “There are many people who voluntarily come forward to donate blood. Through our app, we used to arrange blood donors in each district. But still, we get phone calls at odd hours from panicked bystanders at RCC,” he added.

Faiz Fazzil from Nedumangadu who is a bystander of a leukaemia patient at RCC said that he also faced the issue of shortage of blood at the blood bank. “My aunt is a leukaemia patient with AB positive blood group. Though AB groups are known as universal recipients we find it difficult to arrange blood of this group two days back”, said Fazzil, a nurse by profession.

An official of the Medical College Blood Bank admitted that due to lack of facilities at blood bank they had to dispose of collected blood occasionally. “Recently a freezer of MCH blood bank developed some snag, due to which we were forced to get rid of the blood bottles stored in it,” he said. “There is shortage of blood during emergencies such as accidents, post-pregnancy cases etc. The situation is even worse when there is fever or epidemic outbreak. There are no sufficient devices to segregate plasma and platelet too. So, in such cases we have no other option but to ask the relatives of the patients to find a suitable donor”, he added.